Hi!

I guess you could say this is the chapter many of you have been waiting for, with a twist... Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Anna's going to need all the armour (physical, magical and mental!) she has, and more, if she wants to survive this!

Lara

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Chapter 39

The bed was gargantuan. A four-poster monstrosity that could have easily accommodated four people. Pristinely white sheets and blood-red scatter cushions that must have cost a fortune. I snorted, and started walking towards it.

The mattress was as soft as it looked. I lay down and closed my eyes for a moment. Just a moment. One moment, before I had to figure out what to do about this mess.

I didn't fall asleep - I couldn't, not with all that had happened within the last hours - but I must have drifted into that narrow space between wakefulness and sleep where dreams can become real and vice versa. It's the place where vague ideas form into something solid. I was having one of those moments, watching a thought evolve inside my mind, when I heard it. A rustling sound coming from somewhere beside me. Close. Too close.

I opened my eyes and righted myself in one fluid second. Alexander was standing on the other side of the bed. The white base of his neck peeked through the unbuttoned top of his crisp shirt. At some point in time he must have gotten rid of his dinner jacket.

I glanced at the door, took measure of the room, then looked back at him. His dinner jacket, which was now lying abandoned on the red carpet. Which totally wasn't like him. Alexander was meticulous - a walking redefinition of the term 'control freak'. I stared at the jacket, then at him. At first I thought he was giving me one of his carefully neutral stares. It took me a moment to realize he wasn't looking at me. The vampire was staring right through me, his eyes caught in something that probably did not exist in this world.

"Alexander? Is everything uh... alright?"

He didn't blink like a human might have. Instead his pupils narrowed then dilated, like a widening pool of clear, dark water. Having the head vampire's full attention was more than just a slow prickle at the nape of my neck. It was a set of icy feathers skimming over unexposed skin. Alexander looked at me for a long moment before he turned his back on me.

"I am not quite certain about that yet," he said, walking away from the bed.

I didn't hear his footsteps. It was almost like he was gliding towards the serving trolley beside the lush couch I did my best to neglect so far.

His answer rattled me more than I liked to admit. So far I'd only been worrying about me being exposed to whoever was attending Red Night's Eve. But, somewhere deep down inside I must have believed that Alexander was going to walk me out into the sea of undead, yank my chain a little while at it, and then bring me back, no matter what. Somehow I'd seen him as a wall between me and whoever would and could probably harm me.

It was in this moment that I saw it. I realized that the only thing that could get me out of this was Alexander. I needed him like I'd never needed him before. He was the only thing standing between me and death.

Fear, dark and ugly, stretched out its bony hand, reaching for my heart. The head vampire of New York never admitted being in the dark about anything without there being proof of the contrary. What could have happened that made him abandon his one-man-show of omniscience?

I got up from the bed slowly, watching him warily. There was an assortment of drinks on the golden ornamented serving trolley, heavy stuff, the kind that probably cost more than a fortune. He had his back to me. As I approached him, he poured dark liquid into an exclusive brandy glass that might have well seen the turn of the last century.

He sank into the brocaded armchair without looking at me. I walked to the other side of the glass table and sat down on another brocaded piece of furniture.

"What's going on?"

He was staring at the glass, swinging it gracefully, looking at it as if it was the only thing in existence.

"Hey! I'm talking to you. Alexander, what the hell's going on?"

The vampire looked up slowly. For a moment his eyes halted somewhere under my chin, a glitch, a small stutter in the perfect flow of his gaze.

I felt a hitch in my heartbeat, which I bet, thanks to his vamp senses, Alexander was well aware of. I forced calmness into my system, breathing in and out slowly. Did not look away. I stared at him, hit by one of the harshest epiphanies I had recently. I could lie to Alexander as much as I wanted, but I couldn't lie to myself. Being alone with him did things to me I didn't want to admit. Not even to myself.

How could I walk away from him? No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, there would always be the weight of the bond between us.

"A small problem I did not foresee." He took a small sip from the brandy glass, watching me. A shadow, dark and fleeting crossed his face before the mask of pale smoothness was back on. "It is not of your concern."

My fingernails dug into the soft cloth of the armchair, hands small hills of white knuckles. He was the one who dragged me here, insisting I came to this damned festivity just so he could save face, and now he was going to keep me in the dark?

It wasn't his life on the line, fine, I got that. But after all that he asked of me, he could have given me that much.

I pointed my chin towards the dark liquid in his glass. "Is it spiked?"

He gazed at me for a long moment, before a slow smile crossed his face. "No, it is not, little witch."

"Good," I said.

I got up and made my way to the trolley, grabbing a glass. I stood beside him demonstratively, pouring myself a glass in the same fashion he had, before I went back to my armchair. I sat down, crossing one leg over the other, and swung the glass in a half-circle.

I saw the way his blue eyes watched the movement of my hand, then followed it as I brought the glass to my lips. I took a mouthful and almost gagged. I clamped a hand on my reflexes, welcoming the burning sensation with a calmness I didn't feel. I stared at the glass. Whatever that stuff in that bottle was, it tasted like petrol.

"Something doesn't add up here, Alexander," I said and looked up.

He was still smiling. The blankness in his look was gone. To the contrary, there was a silent challenge somewhere in there, swirling and moving in his blue eyes.

"You keep telling me you want me to be your human servant in the truest sense of the word. Do all that Jack does. Bare my soul and thoughts to you without blinking. And now you're telling me you've encountered a problem and that it's none of my concern. So, does this master-servant relationship only go one way? You get to know everything about me, but I don't get a single thing?"

"You would know the answer to the question, had you truly embraced the bond, little witch." A shadow unfolded on his face, bricks realigning in a wall of icy indifference. "However, this master servant relationship is something you spat on when you left New York, letting me believe you were dead." The tone of his voice had dipped and changed. Thinned out. Icy. Silent.

I sailed out of my seat, catapulted forward by anger and an underlying tension that had been waiting to be released ever since I got into that damned car with him.

I snorted. "Like I even had a choice. You wouldn't even leave me space to breathe. I've got nothing back there. Nothing! And it's all your fault."

Less than the blink of an eye, a clock-hand caught in between, zero space within two digits. He was standing in front of me, blue eyes, deep and dark, gazing down.

"You would not even be standing here, if it were not for our bond. Never forget that, little witch. Besides, I might have given the incentive, yet you were the one that lied to the Circle."

"What did you expect me to do, Alexander? Throw everything away that I worked so hard for? Everything that I lived for? For something I didn't even want?"

He cocked an eyebrow. "There are thousands who would kill to trade places with you."

"I was never one of them. You know that," I said. "Why make me your servant?"

He looked at me for a moment. "You were dying," he said. The words were flat, came out matter-of-factly. Not even an ounce of remorse, or emotion in his voice. No nothing.

I shook my head. "You could have let me die and walk away without guilt. Why, out of all people, did you make me your servant?"

His eyes slid over my legs and up to my face, a slow, precise motion - as if he might gain the answer just by looking.

"Maybe it was because you were never one of them," he said softly.

The answer was wrong on so many levels, I couldn't even begin to discern its exact meaning. I averted my head. I couldn't even look at him.

"I should go to bed now," I said. The words didn't come naturally. Not when I just wanted him gone.

He didn't move, didn't even blink. He was too close to me for comfort. Somehow I knew he was not going to simply back away.

"Please get out, Alexander," I said, forcing calmness into my voice.

"I will not leave this room. It is mine."

My head snapped back up to him, aghast.

He turned and walked away from me. I saw him approach the bed, hands going to the front of his shirt.

I flew around, fingers flexing and curling at my sides. My eyes weren't ready for that kind of sight. Nakedness was a dangerous territory with Alexander, one I'd learned to avoid.

"Fine. I'll take the other one," I ground out, approaching the door.

"The other one is Jack's. Do not even think about leaving this room, little witch."

The tone of his voice made me stop.

"No matter what transpires within these walls, you cannot show any weakness. If there is doubt that you are what we want everyone to believe you are, it could cost you more than you are ready to give. Do not forget what the whole Cellini family believes," he said "The nature of our relationship here and now will be the same as it was in Pennsylvania."

I turned, slowly. His face was set. Blueness gyrated and moved underneath that impenetrable mask. The weight of his eyes slammed into me, denting careful walls I'd built around myself.

"There will not be the shard of a doubt that it is real," he said.

Love. He was talking about love. The thing that we wanted everyone else to believe was what made me become his human servant to begin with. The biggest and most dangerous game of deception I'd ever entered.

I stared at him for a long moment, forcing my eyes to stay on his face and ignore the gaping shirt that revealed a line of well defined, muscled flesh.

Just a little longer.

I had to bear with it for the length of Red Night's Eve, then I'd get myself out of the master vampire's life, slip underneath his human servant radar and go right back to the Lumenis. If they let me.

I looked away.

"Fine. I'll take the couch," I said, eyeing the furniture. The thing looked less than comfortable, but if it was only for one night, or day in this case, it would do. Beat the hell out of the alternative.

I made it a few measly steps towards my destined sleeping-place before Alexander spoke again. The words made me stop and look at him, slammed into me with a weight I hadn't expected.

"I will not let your squeamishness interfere with our bargain. Not this time. Should one of the Cellinis' human servants enter our quarters unexpectedly, how will you explain why my human servant is sleeping on a couch, rather than in a bed with her master, as his lover?" The last word was spoken softly, like a set of cold fingers caressing fragile, tender skin.

I stared at him.

He took a step closer and smiled. "Or, could it be that you are reluctant to sleep in one and the same bed with me for other reasons than you like to admit?"

The smile knocked some sense into me, smoothed folds and creases in my mind that kept me from thinking straight. It helped me slip into myself and into who I was.

"Yeah, sleeping in bed with a corpse has always been my life goal," I said with nonchalance - nonchalance I didn't really feel. I gave him a feigned look of boredom. "Thanks to you, I already did that. So no, Alexander, apart from the usual, sharing a bed with you doesn't bother me."

I thought he was going to say something. No, I expected him to say something. No way he could have missed the insult I put in there. He did not. He just looked at me, long and hard, before slipping out of his shirt. The cloth glided from his hands and sailed to the carpet like dust settling in slow motion. It wasn't until he turned his back on me that he spoke again.

"Put out the light before you go to sleep, little witch."

All I could do was stare at his back, wondering if I would get any sleep at all.